A few months ago at work I moved out of the room I had sat in for thirteen years (I went home at night) and over into a new room in a new building. The new room is a “room within a room,” meaning I have to walk through someone else’s room to get to my new room. A dozen or so people sit in the outer room and do something for the organization completely unrelated and foreign to what I do. If this were a automotive plant, my group would be ones managing the company’s computer network, while their group would be the ones processing people’s car titles — I think. We’re so far removed from one another that I doubt we even show up on their organizational chart, and I’m pretty sure they’re not on ours.
Because we’re completely different organizations, the door to our room is locked and must be opened with an electronic key card. The card reader sits off to the right of the door and was mounted essentially in a lady’s cubical. That lady’s name is Miss JoAnn. She’s probably five foot tall, pleasantly plump, and always smiling. I’m sure she doesn’t want us stepping inside her cube to swipe our cards any more than we want to step inside it every single time we need to unlock our door, but she’s always smiling regardless. The card reader takes up to five seconds to read our cards, so multiple times a day my co-workers and I find ourselves standing in Miss JoAnn’s cube, making small talk about the weather for a few seconds until the red light turns green and our door lock pops open.
You may recall I was in Seattle last week. When I returned to Oklahoma Monday morning I was informed that Miss JoAnn passed away. She went into the hospital over a blood clot, had a stroke, developed pneumonia, and died. She apparently also had pancreatic cancer, but hadn’t told any of her co-workers. She was there when I left, and gone when I returned.
Above Miss JoAnn’s monitor sat a statue of a little girl sitting on a swing. I assumed it represented her granddaughter, but I never asked her about it. By Monday afternoon, that statue along with the rest of Miss JoAnn’s belongings had been packed into boxes and taken away. By Tuesday morning, someone else had already moved into her cube. I haven’t made any small talk with the new girl sitting there, but I’m sure eventually I will.
For now, I’m going to miss JoAnn.